Computer language geeks should check out this article on the hypothetical language Xen. This is basically a collection of extensions to C# to make it much more usable for data processing. In particular, the article describes how to extend C# to make it really, really easy to use it for XML processing; along the way, they almost casually make it easier to embed SQL processing as well.
Of course, the annoying thing is that the chances of actually seeing this language come to market are slim -- MSR comes up with any number of great ideas that the Monolith never actually gets around to selling. But I can hope -- I suspect these concepts have ramifications well beyond XML processing...
